To: Symbolics
From: Jay Wurts
Date: March 27, 1989
Subject: Organizational Announcements
Today I am pleased to announce the promotion of five senior
employees to the level of officer in recognition of their outstanding
achievements and their continued leadership and contribution to
Symbolics. To qualify to be an officer, either a manager or an
individual contributor must have the proven entrepreneurial ability
to define, pursue, and succeed at major new development,
management, or sales challenges. These are challenges that are
perceived as extremely difficult or are forays into uncharted
territory. Excellent personal skills to sell ideas, enlist or coordinate
resources and exercise good business judgement are required.
First, I am happy to announce the promotion of Howie Shrobe
to the position of Vice-President, Technology reporting to Don
Sundue. Howie will be responsible for stimulating and directing our
efforts to develop the technology strategy for our future software
and hardware products. In his new role, he will be responsible for
making sure that, in strategy formulation and in day to day
operations, we understand and utilize both current and new
technology appropriately.
As most of you know, Howie was an early Symbolics employee,
joining the company during its start-up phase. Prior to Symbolics, he
performed pioneering research in VLSI CAD and artificial intelligence
at the MIT AI Lab. Since joining the Company, he has provided
major contributions to our technology development as both a
manager and as an individual contributer: he spearheaded the AI
Products Group, which developed some of Symbolics' first application
software products, and he was the chief architect of Joshua, our
innovative hybrid expert systems tool which has been well received
by customers. Howie is also a recognized spokesman for the
company as chairperson of the AAAI conference committee and as a
respected author, editor, professor and lecturer. Howie's broad
hardware and software vision combined with an extraordinary
ability to simplify complex ideas and build a consensus on future
direction will be key to success in his new role. He will provide
invaluable leadership as we investigate ways to extend our
technology to new users and new markets.
Second, I am also pleased to announce that Howard Cannon has
been promoted to the level of Vice President. Howard's pioneering
ability to lead the way in new areas has played a major role in
Symbolics' success over the past eight years. Most recently, as acting
Vice-President, Marketing, he successfully directed the market
launch of both our MacIvory and XL400 products. This launch was
particularly successful because it was accomplished without halting
sales of our previous products before the new products could be
shipped in volume. He was directly responsible for the development
of CLOE, our first delivery product to run on conventional hardware
platforms. Howard initiated our graphics division and grew the
business to $4 million in two years. Howard was the leader of the
five man task force in Chatsworth that debugged and shipped the
first 3600 machines. He also designed the front-end processor for
the 3600. Before co-founding Symbolics, as a member of the
research staff at the MIT AI Lab, he invented the Flavors object-
oriented programming system. His broad technical vision,
understanding of technical marketing issues as well as his extensive
application and customer experience will be an invaluable resource
to Symbolics as we focus our marketing plans on new opportunities.
I am also extremely pleased to announce the creation of a new
officer-level positon for exceptional technical leaders in Symbolics,
the Symbolics Fellow, and the promotion of Bruce Edwards, Mike
McMahon and David Moon to this position.
The Symbolics Fellow position has been created to recognize
those individuals who are at the pinacle of technical excellence. A
Fellow's technical contributions must have resulted in proven major
success for Symbolics. The Fellow must also have earned universal
respect and recognition from his/her peers as a "standard setter" for
technical excellence. In addition to specific accomplishments, a
Fellow also fulfills key roles as a company innovator, mentor,
entrepreneur and ambassador. The new position provides
outstanding technical contributors with a parallel career path to
senior-level management. A formal definition of the position and the
eligibility process for future Fellows is being prepared as part of our
company-wide review of level structures.
Bruce Edwards was a Symbolics founder and was previously on
the research staff of the MIT AI Lab. At Symbolics, Bruce has been
instrumental in the development of virtually every major hardware
product. He debugged the orginial LISP machine hardware, designed
the machine's convolution processor and accompanying microcode.
He participated in the G machine development effort including
designing its micro-architecture and performing the product's
technical design review.
Bruce has had a major role in the newest Ivory products as
well. He was responsible for the I machine architecture and all the
Ivory micro-code. He has had a major role in the development of the
Ivory chip, including the design review, performing the timing
analysis and providing direction on the chip fabrication and test
process.
Mike McMahon performed pioneering research on user
interface software at the MIT AI Lab. At MIT, Mike developed the
Zmail electronic mail system and was a principal developer of the
ZMACS editor. He co-authored the original LISP machine window
system.
At Symbolics, Mike has been involved with all aspects of our
"above the compiler" software. His early work included major
contributions to the port of Genera from the LM-2 to the 3600
system. He was the chief architect and initial implementer of the
Generic Networking System and the Namespace System. Mike was
solely responsible for the design of Dynamic Windows.
He has provided major contributions to our hypertext-based
Writers Tools and he was the architect and the developer of our new
graphics substrate. He also conceived and implemented the
embedded user interface which forms the basis of our newest add-in
board product strategy.
Mike is a constant source of new and "radically" innovative
software which will help ensure Symbolics' software leadership and
the success of our future products.
David Moon was also a founder of Symbolics. He was
previously with the MIT AI Lab where he wrote much of the original
LISP machine systems software and microcode. He designed the disk
control, I/O and memory boards. He also conceived and
implemented the Chaosnet protocol and was the co-implementer of
Maclisp on the Multics operating system.
At Symbolics, Dave has continued to make extraordinary
technical contributions in both software and hardware areas. He was
the basic architect of the 3600 system and personally designed
several of the original boards. He also made substantial
contributions to the Ivory architecture and developed the Ivory
software requirements analysis. He designed the architecture for
embedding Ivory systems in host computers and implemented most
of the low-level portions of this architecture for MacIvory.
Dave was the chief architect and sole implementer of the New
Flavors object-oriented programming system. He developed the first
practical emphemeral garbage collection system.
Dave has been a member of the X3J13 Common LISP
Standardization Committee since its inception. He has authored
numerous articles on Genera and CLOS. He has been involved in
virtually every major project within Symbolics and constantly offers
new insights and ideas for advancing our technology.
These individuals, while continuing their current
responsibilities, are expected to have a broad influence on the
policies and strategies of Symbolics and our future technical
directions. Please join me in recognition of these outstanding
individuals and in wishing Howie, Howard, Bruce, Mike and Dave
success in their new roles.